The Hundredth Monkey Meets CATMO

What is the tipping point for real change? Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, explores that phenomenon. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product.

I believe that we are nearing the tipping point where CATMO becomes synonymous with the new economic miracle sweeping the global landscape. As the 215th country becomes home for OnPassive founders, the tipping point may be somewhere between 750,000 to one million. What will it take to reach the 100th monkey? Will it be a million members?

David Floyd, writing in First On The Beach, talks about his view, “The Hundredth Monkey effect is a hypothetical phenomenon in which either new behavior or an idea spreads rapidly from one group to all related groups once a critical number in that group displays the new behavior or adopts the idea.

This is not a new story, having been reproduced numerous times over the last 60 years, including a book by Ken Keyes Jr, from which the following is adapted. He wrote about it in an effort to focus attention on the ever-increasing threat of nuclear war that permeated life in the late 1950’s and 60’s.

However, I’ll admit that while many of the observations reported are accurate, some of the assumptions made, are, at best, unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, it stands on its own as an analogy for the power of an idea “whose time has come”.

Ken Keyes’ book included the following:

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata (Macaque), had been observed in the wild for over thirty years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing the monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers, too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults didn’t and kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, the number of Koshima monkeys washing their sweet potatoes had grown but they were still in the minority. The exact number is unknown but let’s suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys who had adopted the practice. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to also wash potatoes. A good example was set.

Then it happened! By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing the sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

[This is the bit that’s definitely unsubstantiated - DF] But notice. The most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then spontaneously jumped over the sea - colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys as Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes!

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of those people alone. But there is a point at which, if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness reaches almost everyone!”

A Cornell graduate student on their university blog opined, “This is very reminiscent of the concept of information cascades, as how this single idea was able to spread quickly not just within the island, but to surrounding islands, and soon to surrounding islands of those surrounding islands. It is interesting in how far reaching the concept of information cascades is, that it is incorporated into cultural myths and legends. Although not a true story, the phenomenon and ideas within the story ring true -a collective consciousness will always be present in the world, especially in this day and age. With modern technology, opinions and behavior can spread so quickly across such a large span of distance.”

So, the Hundredth Monkey meets CATMO. It’s like King Kong and Godzilla together as co-stars in a movie thriller, a dramatic event that has seen no equal. Whenever the collective consciousness of the world reaches critical mass, an idea whose time has come will emerge and become the dominant thought, the dominant way in the land. New economic systems put in place will expand and replace the former ways. Ash Mufareh, CEO of OnPassive says it is” the correction of the corruption.”

Think of it this way: because the speed of awareness is instantaneous globally with the internet, satellite technology, and social media, there is no lag time to learning. Knowledge is unpacked and delivered simultaneously to Papua New Guinea as readily as to San Francisco’s Silicon Valley. Collective consciousness via the O-Net is the Hundredth Monkey. We are living is those times were the inhabitants in remote places like Nepal are teaching on O-Cademy to students in our local Atlanta neighborhoods. When we want to reach the world, all of it, we don’t Zoom because they can’t, we O-Connect because we can.

The tools of our trade, the portfolios of personal productivity, are transforming our way of doing education, communication, social interaction and the way we do business itself. We have reached the tipping point. No longer are the old ways fashionable. Today we wear a new logo, sport a new look, and that look is called ONPASSIVE.

Dr. Bill Williams

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